


at night my hand can touch your feathers

by woahrebecca



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, immediately post briarwood arc, post briarwood arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:10:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7556068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woahrebecca/pseuds/woahrebecca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time in years, Percy dreams again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	at night my hand can touch your feathers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cinderfell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinderfell/gifts).



> Am I even fully caught up on Critical Role??? Nope.  
> Did I have to write a fic regardless? Yep.
> 
> First time writing for Critical Role, hopefully it won't be the last.
> 
> (title quote source: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/birds-appearing-dream)
> 
> for kaity; for dragging me into yet another thing xoxo

Percy can remember a lot of things; he can remember the specific steps he has to take when making his bullets, he can remember the way through Whitestone Castle even after all this time, he can remember the exact moment he made his first gun, can remember how the wind howled outside as rain battered down around him.

Percy cannot remember any of his dreams from when he was a child, he cannot remember any of his dreams from before the Briarwoods killed his whole family - or so he thought, or maybe they did. This Cassandra he knows now is not the Cassandra who he saw fall from arrows as he fled. 

Percy cannot remember any of his dreams before Orthax.

He remembers all his dreams since that fateful one where Orthax approached him. He remembers his dreams of watching his family being killed time and time again as he stood there watching, unable to do anything. He remembers all these dreams, the dreams that would leave him in a sweat as he woke, anger boiling in his blood beneath his skin, fists clenched tight and an uncontrollable urge to tinker, to build, to plan, to create, to  _ kill _ . These dreams have been an inescapable and almost expected part of his life, an added constant variable to the grand experiment that has been his fucked up life.

So to say he’s shocked when he wakes up in his room in Whitestone - the Briarwoods killed no less than 24 hours prior, the unknown magic quantity still residing under the castle - gasping, a different dream fresh in his mind, is an understatement. 

Not that it was a bad dream, it was quite the opposite in fact. In an odd way, as unexpected as the content of his dream was, a part of him is  _ still  _ entirely unsurprised in anyway whatsoever - that part of his brains laughs at the rest of him, how could he have dreamt of anything else anyway - that Vex’ahlia had a large role in his dream. Well, that she was the only other person in his dream. He dreamt of Vex’ahlia. Not Orthax - which, honestly, knowing his luck was just as likely to happen - and he didn’t dream of his family being killed in front of him. He dreamt of Vex’ahlia. Multiple times.

_Well._

He reaches for his glasses, then the tattered book he keeps near him at all times, the book he writes all his genius and borderline insane plans - he’ll eventually have to dedicate himself to making one, especially after Scanlan threw his pepperbox into acid - and writes what he can remember.

* * *

 

i.

His first dream started like his Orthax dreams, until suddenly it wasn’t like his Orthax dreams anymore. The tendrils of black smoke that would coalesce into the form of the creature that he had carried with him for so long slowly changed colour, from the pitch black he was used to, to a deep brown colour that he recognised. The wisps of deep brown smoke solidified into strands of hair, that moved of its own accord until the countless wisps were shaped into a braid. 

Specifically, Vex’ahlia’s braid.

He was in a familiar position, she had him pushed against a wall in the upper floors of a manor.

“Are you alright?” 

“I think so, I’m -” he averts his gaze again, even in his dream he can’t look her in the eyes, even when he is clean and free of Orthax he cannot do it.

“Look me in the eye Percy.”

And he does. He sees the determination burning in her eyes and a set jaw and he can’t help but marvel. In his dream he doesn’t tell her that he feels cruel, yet in control - because right now he is feeling something else, something that is not cruelty and he is not in control in this dream - because instead, instead of telling her these things, he kisses her.

He kisses her because this is a dream and he has always been a risk taker and this is a risk, but he also kisses her because, he muses, he has wanted to kiss her for a while. She kisses him back, this is not like the kisses on the cheek she would give him when he handed an arrow to her.

And as soon as he breaks away, she is gone.

* * *

 

ii.

In front of him now is a familiar sight, a second home. He is in his workshop in Greyskull Keep and he can hear a voice from out of his line of sight, standing just behind him is Vex’ahlia, watching him work. This is commonplace, she would often watch him as he worked - maybe she found it fascinating, maybe she wanted to learn, maybe she thought that if she watched him work that he would be compelled to make more arrows for her and sometimes it almost worked - as she rested against the table behind him. Close enough to see, not close enough to get in the way.

But this time, this time it was different. He heard her footsteps coming up behind him - either she had given up on trying to dance in the realm of shadows like Vax’ildan, or she wanted him to hear her coming - and just before he had the chance to turn around to speak to her, her slender arms had snaked their way around his shoulders. She tucks her head into the crook of his neck and he relaxes almost instantly.

She spoke to him in this dream, her lips brushing against the skin on his neck but no matter how hard he tries he cannot remember what she said to him. He realises that, like in his previous dream, he could turn and kiss her but as soon as he turns and looks at her she smiles so knowingly at him, before she disappears.

* * *

iii.

The last part of the dream is the part that woke him. Because he watches her fall in the Ziggurat at the hands of Lady Briarwood - yet another person that the Briarwood’s have taken from him. As she falls, so does his stomach and she is lying there and no healing magic or potion is working and she’s not waking up and she wouldn’t be here if not for him and this is all his fault. 

It is all his fault that the Briarwood’s have taken another person that he loves from him. Well. Loves. That’s a new realisation - not to say he doesn’t love all of Vox Machina, he loves them all in their own way, but this, what he feels towards Vex is different and new and an unknown quantity.

In hindsight, he should’ve figured this out a long time again. He hypothesises that Orthax was blocking these out so he wouldn’t be distracted on his quest for vengeance.

Vex’s eyes flutter open and she says that she is okay and as she reaches forward to kiss him, his heart beats wildly and the moment her lips meet his, he is in his room in Whitestone Castle, breathing quickly, goosebumps on his skin where her arms had wrapped around him and the ghost of her lips against his.


End file.
